Demons in the Night
by OutOfTheConfinesOfFear
Summary: It is just one of the ways she saves him from himself - In the middle of the night with whispers and a beating heart. Just a short moment.


Surely this is totally unnecessary but I am just going to point out that I merely borrow these beautiful little creatures we have come to know as Castle and Beckett. I do not own them, I have just fallen in love with them.

Just a little moment in the night here. Hope you like it.

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He draws in a ragged breath, but the once warm air freezes and solidifies, the broken shards of it tear the inside of his throat and then drip down into an ice cold pool of toxic breath and blood that settles at the bottom of his lungs. Every muscle tenses and quakes and his entire body shudders as wave after wave of wild pain and burning loss rolls through him until the breath that had settled at the pit of his lungs suddenly vaporises and surges out, his lungs falling flat. It all goes limp then, all his strength is wrenched from his body and makes an escape with the breath that got away and he needs her to stay with him, she needs to just hold on and stay with him, "I love you Kate, I love you".

She creeps through the unlit loft, the stress and tension of a long day draining out into the dark silence of the night as she moves. She toes off her shoes, puts her gun and badge in the safe and starts to unbutton her blouse as she nudges the bedroom door open and scuttles her socked feet through the darkness. The blinds have been left open and she smiles a lazy smile when she catches sight of him in the 3am light flooding into the room, flat on his stomach and sprawled across the bed, arms and legs in all directions and hair fluffed around his head. Her smile falls though when she notices the tension in his body, the way his t-shirt is bunched up over his taught shoulders, a crinkled victim of his restlessness, the sheets and blankets twisted and tangled through his legs and his body heaving with too heavy breaths.

She closes her eyes and releases a heavy sigh, slips out of her pants, pulls off her socks and dumps them in the puddle of his that she almost tripped over and then drops her blouse and bra into the pool too. She grabs one of his worn cotton t-shirts and slips it on before making her way over to the bed because the desire for a hot shower that had pulled her here flitted out of her mind as soon as his body tensed and jerked, his entire being lifting off the bed on a gasp before collapsing limply.

She slips in beside him, the cool sheets unforgiving and sending a chill through her as she stretches her body out alongside his. She lays her head down next to the hand he has clenched tightly around a handful of her pillow and soundlessly reads his body. His head turned towards her, his lips parted and his hair flopped over his eyes. The muscles running down his arms tighten again and tremble with the pressure of his fight and she is just waiting, waiting for some sort of elucidation from his body as to which of his tormentors has caught him tonight.

It is always when he sleeps on his stomach, she thinks it may have something to do with the way his body is forced to breathe, but it is always when he sleeps on his stomach that his demons seem to capture him and drag him under. She knows most of them, sometimes they are demons born out of Alexis' childhood nightmares or the darkest of his days when he couldn't keep his baby girl safe, didn't know where she was, who had stolen her away from him. Some of the demons are Alexis', and some are Martha's, and some are his own, born out of the dark things that haunt him still. She just needs something, needs his body to tell her something so she knows how to pull him out of this. If it is Alexis, which it mostly is, it needs to be a sharp shaking of his bones, a quick snap back to reality and a calling of his name. Martha's demons need to be soothed away by warm hands and whispered reassurances and the demons that were born from those dark things that he carries alone, those ones she squeezes away with a too tight hold in the night.

She reaches out and brushes the hair away from his damp forehead, pushes on his shoulder and rolls him onto his side so that they lay face to face. She catches them then, the silent tears that wrestle through his clenched eyes and drip over his nose before sinking away into the sheets. She sees it then, the things his body is saying. She knows then, that it is her, that they are the demons that were born out of her that are tormenting him because the silent tears, those are always for her, for a cemetery and a bullet and a half a second too late. Those are the silent tears. Her own silent tears threaten escape then as she reads his face, the pain and loss etched into the scrunched lines and seeping into each breath that whimpers on its way out.

She shakes her head lightly at him, at the way he fights so gallantly, how silently he battles against the darkness. Even in his subconsciousness he is stoic. She reaches out then and grabs the hand that clawed its way onto his own pillow when she rolled him, stretches the neck of her cotton shirt, pulls his hand inside and wordlessly lays his fingertips down over her beating heart. He chokes out a broken and beaten "Stay" and her resolve begins to crumble under the force of his pain.

The warmth of her body gradually permeates its way into his senses and he sluggishly becomes aware of the rhythm her heart is beating through his callused fingertips and into his bloodstream. His eyes move erratically beneath his eyelids and she watches him fight to pull out of the grasps of his tormentors and open his eyes. She holds his palm tightly to her chest and keeps her breathing steady, lets the warmth and rhythm of her body bring him back to her. His teary and solemn eyes flutter on a few drowsy blinks before he finds her in almost focus. His lungs burn and his eyes widen as his fingers curl into her warm flesh. She blinks away her tears and gives him a somewhat watery reassurance of a smile.

He pins her with a disorientated and baffled gaze, the tortured sleep still hazing his vision and she feels his body start to tremble when he lets out a shaky and desperately hopeful, "Kate?"

She reaches out with her free hand and gently smooths away the wrinkles in his brow before soothingly whispering, "Yeah, shhh… it's okay." He holds her gaze, squints and tries to refocus as fresh tears well up and spill over the edges of his swollen lower eyelids, catching on the fine hairs and then dripping onto the swells of his flushed cheeks. She leans over to him then and rolls her lips over his skin, kisses the tears away.

The warmth of her gentle mouth pulls the last of the sleep from his vision and then he is scrambling around trying to find purchase in reality. He is frantic then, clutching and grabbing at her body, pulling her close and tucking his head in beside hers, squeezing her too tightly. "Oh, Kate", he breathes it out over her chin and the warmth of his relieved sigh flutters and drifts down her neck before tangling in the fingers he still has clutched over her heart.

He pushes away from her then, rolls her onto her back, running his gaze up and down her body. He is desperate now, the demons are threatening and he needs more. His breath is coming out hot, hard and heavy against her collar bone as he removes his hand from her chest and moves to curl the fingers of both hands around the hem of her shirt. He is tugging then, pulling the fabric away from her heated skin, over her head and tossing it off the bed. She is lying bare before him, left in only a lacy scrap of material banded over her hips and her body has picked up his panting rhythm. She shivers and her skin erupts in small bumps as the cold early morning air gushes in and whips around her.

He braces himself with one hand on the mattress next to her, his cotton clad chest hovering over her bare one as he takes her in. "Kate…" it comes out a whispered prayer and then his broad palm is back on her, the heat of his skin soaking through her chest as he presses down on her heart. She lies still beneath him, lets her healed body give him what he needs. He dips his head then, lays a reverent, sucking kiss on the puckered skin between her breasts and then turns his head and lays his ear down over her heart. His head is pillowed on her bare chest, his damp relieved breaths ghosting over her and his arm is draped around her, a tight band across the bottom of her ribs as his hand squeezes too tightly around her side. He nuzzles further into her, his body stretched out along her side and his hair wisping over her neck and chin and then he lays a kiss to the inside of her right breast where his mouth rests and sighs out an, "I love you Kate, I love you" into her skin. She clenches her eyes shut at the onslaught of emotions that threaten to pull her apart and breathes deeply.

She pulls the blankets up around her waist and over his back, wraps one arm around his shoulders, her fingers dipping into the curve of his neck and then runs her other fingers through his hair, soothing the tension and pain and fear and loss out of him. His body starts getting heavy, his breaths warmer and a little more steadied and her body begins to follow suit as the last of his tears slide down the valley of her breasts and seep into her skin. She whispers a "Just close your eyes" over the top of his head. He does.

He sleeps then, draped over her bare body with her heart beating along under his ear, he sleeps.

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Thanks for reading x


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